The Keeper of the Gate Read online

  He turned to Kaspervitch.

  "So when's the next one pencilled in?"

  "Two days time—but he won't be there, will he?" Kaspervitch said.

  "He won't. But we will," Jake replied. He had his game face on and the bit between his teeth. Nothing I could say now was going to make any difference. All I could do was tag along, and hope I could prevent the coffin dream from ever coming to pass.

  The Thursday meeting was due for two in the morning in a disused warehouse in the docks. Jake and I got there early, around midnight. We parked well away from the place and walked in through the alleyways of derelict offices and factories. Both our fathers had worked here, way back when, and as kids we'd ran together through these same docks, filled then with workmen and noise and vitality. Now they were as dead as the cellar beneath the Mitchell house, and damned near as cold. We took up a spot in the girders that made up what was left of the rafters of the warehouse, and tried to make ourselves comfortable for what might prove to be a lengthy stakeout.

  Jake was quiet, scarily so, for I've rarely met a more voluble man, but he seemed content to sit and watch. He wouldn't allow any discussion of the events in the cellar. I couldn't really blame him for that—but I also couldn't help but wonder whether he had seen a dream of his own—and whether he might have been looking down at me in a coffin in his version.

  My butt was starting to get numb from the cold seeping up through the girders when we finally saw some action. We were alerted firstly by the slam of car doors—two followed by a third a minute later. After a delay, three men, dressed in long, hooded robes that might have been comical in another situation, walked into the warehouse from the west-end and immediately started drawing diagrams and circles on the floor. The end result was all too familiar—it seemed to perfectly match the one that had been etched beneath Mrs. Mitchell's dead body.

  I realized I was holding my breath, waiting for something—distant chanting maybe, or another vision of the cold depths of space. What I didn't expect was for one of the three figures to stand in the center of the diagram, turn, and look straight up at our position.

  "You can come down now," a deep male voice said. "The show's about to begin and you'll get a better view from here."

  Jake didn't seem in the slightest surprised by the turn of events, leading me to wonder again what it was that he had seen in our time in the cellar. I was still wondering as we clambered down through a tangle of metal and girders to the floor of the warehouse.

  The tall robed man was so polite it was almost surreal.

  "Welcome, gentlemen," he said. "We've been expecting you."

  "You saw it in advance, didn't you?" Jake said. "That's what you do—you use some kind of new trick to see what's going to happen."

  "Oh, it's not a trick, I assure you," the robed man said. "And it's not new either—the Gatekeeper has been showing people the way since time began. You'll see for yourselves soon enough."

  "I've got no intention of seeing any more," Jake said. He drew his gun and aimed it directly at the robed figure's chest. The other two—neither of whom had yet said a word, stood several paces further back, but showed no sign of getting involved.

  "Jake," I whispered. "We can't do anything here. We've no proof of anything."

  Jake waved his pistol towards the tall man.

  "He did it—I know he did—he killed the Mitchell family."

  The tall man laughed.

  "Is that what this is about? I'm afraid you have it all wrong. Mitchell saw what needed doing at our last meeting. His wife was going to die—he saw it, and he knew it—that's the way it works. Once something is seen, it cannot be changed. Poor Mitchell couldn't handle it. He snapped—and you saw the results. And of course, his poor wife died anyway—such a shame."

  He didn't sound in the slightest bit concerned, either at the death of Mitchell and his family, or by the fact he had a gun pointed at him.

  Jake's earlier calm was rapidly being replaced by anger.

  "That's not what happened—there's no way Mitchell could have done it—his gun was in the cellar."

  "Oh, I did that," the tall man said casually. "I had to, you see—I saw it, so it had to happen. And I think I'm beginning to understand why it had to happen. It brought you here, to this place, this time. It brought you to the Gate. Yog-Sothoth has something for you to see."

  We'd just taken a jump—another one—into the Twilight Zone. This wasn't going the way either of us would have predicted. Or rather, not as I would have predicted, for Jake seemed to know exactly what he was doing. He raised his gun.

  The robed man drew a knife from up his left sleeve—a long curved thing with writing carved along the length of the blade.

  "Put down your weapon, sir," Jake said.

  "I assure you, it's purely ceremonial," he said, and raised it above his head.

  "Put down the weapon or I'll shoot."

  "You'll do what you have to do," the man said sadly. "I've already seen it."

  He lifted the knife high, stepped forward and let out a yell.

  "Ia!"

  Jake put two bullets in him.

  The tall man fell to the ground, grunted twice and coughed up blood all over the chalk circle.

  Jake stood over the body, eyes glazed as if he was not really sure what he'd just done. I wasn't sure what to do about it—by rights I should have hauled him off downtown, but he was my partner—I trusted him. I just hoped I was going to be able to believe his reasoning.

  As it turned out, I didn't have time to think. A colder chill blew through the warehouse, and behind it came the first distant sounds of chanting.

  "Step out of the circle," one of the robed figures said. "Please, step out of the circle."

  I took a step back—all that was needed to get me beyond the widest extent of the drawing—but Jake stood his ground, standing over the prone robed body.

  The chanting got louder, the same dissonant mixture of singing, yips and screams we'd heard in the cellar.

  "Jake—I think you should get out of there."

  "Don't worry, pal," he said, grimly. "I know what needs doing—I've seen it."

  The cold bit at my bones, and the chanting rose to echo and ring all around the warehouse. Something shifted—I can't describe it any better than that, and that's exactly what if felt like—a shifting to somewhere subtly elsewhere—or elsewhen.

  It started small; a tear in the fabric of reality, no bigger than a sliver of fingernail, appeared in the center of the circle above Jake's head and hung there. As I watched it settled into a new configuration, a black oily droplet held quivering in empty air.

  The walls of the warehouse throbbed like a heartbeat. The black egg pulsed in time. And now it was more than obvious—it was growing.

  It calved, and calved again.

  Four eggs hung in a tight group above Jake's head, pulsing in time with the rising cacophony of the chanting. Colors danced and flowed across the sheer black surfaces; blues and greens and shimmering silvers on the eggs.

  In the blink of an eye there were eight.

  I was vaguely aware of Jake shouting, but I was past caring, lost in contemplation of the beauty before me.

  Sixteen now, all perfect, all dancing.

  The chanting grew louder still.

  Thirty two now, and they had started to fill the warehouse with dancing aurora of shimmering lights that pulsed and capered in time with the throb of magic and the screams of the chant, everything careening along in a big happy dance.

  Sixty-four, each a shimmering pearl of black light.

  The colors filled the room, spilled out over the circle, crept around my feet, danced in my eyes, in my head, all though my body. I gave myself to it, willingly. The warehouse filled with stars, and we danced among them.

  I strained to turn my head towards the eggs.

  A hundred and twenty eight now, and already calving into two hundred and fifty-six.

  Jake had tears in his eyes as he looked at me.
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  "This is how it has to be," he said.

  The protective circle enfolded what I guessed to be a thousand and twenty four eggs. Jake lifted his gun and emptied the clip into them.

  Several things happened at once. The myriad of bubbles popped, burst and disappeared as if they had never been there at all. Jake screamed—a wail that in itself was enough to set the walls throbbing and quaking. Swirling clouds seem to come from nowhere to fill the room with darkness. Everything went black as a pit of hell, and a thunderous blast rocked the warehouse, driving me down into a place where I dreamed of empty spaces filled with oily, glistening bubbles. They popped and spawned yet more bubbles, then even more, until I swam in a swirling sea of colors.

  I drifted.

  When I got back—was given back—to what passes for reality, thin daylight lit the floor of the warehouse. There was no sign of the two robed figures—nor of the body of the man that Jake had shot. The chalk circle on the floor, and any blood that had been there, had been scuffed and scraped into the dust so much that any forensics gathering would be almost impossible.

  Jake lay on his back, dead eyes staring up at me.

  I didn't shed a tear in the warehouse, but the funeral is later today. I have to do my best not to cry, but I fear that I will.

  This is how it has to be.

  Out of the Black

  T en short years.

  That’s how long we have. The ore that gives us light, keeps us warm, and runs the food plants has finally come to an end. Three hundred and fifty years after the dimming. A good run.

  But not long enough. Not by my reckoning. I’m only twelve points short of my breeding merit. There’s no way I’m checking out of here before then.

  So I volunteered. “Exploration duty”, that’s what they call it. “Suicide”, Tom Draper said. “Escape”, Linda whispered in my ear the night before I left.

  As it turns out, all three were right in their own way.

  It started well enough, despite my apprehension at heading out. The flyer they gave me hadn’t been upside for thirty years; nobody had. Too cold, too dark, no point. Until now. I had to wait for two days while the bots fitted an ore probe and a drill and that just gave me more time to fret. I was actually happy when I strapped in and took the flyer into the tube.

  The five-minute ascent to Hell soon put paid to that.

  I felt cold before we got halfway up. Of course I knew about Hell. No light for three hundred years, thirty foot thick ice shelves and no life bigger than a patch of lichen. I knew that. I just didn’t realise what it meant in real terms.

  At least the flyer had a heater. I pushed it up to Full and it still wasn’t going to be enough. We punched through to the surface a minute later and I immediately forgot about the cold.

  They’d taught me about Hell. But they hadn’t mentioned the sky. A carpet of stars hung from horizon to horizon - a glittering jewel that had remained unseen for decades. I felt humbled in the face of such immensity. More than that, the open space filled me with such dread that I had to lower my eyes, unused as they are to looking at anything more than ten feet away.

  I switched on the ore probe and let it run. I had nothing to do for hours now except hang there in the sky and try to ignore the stars that now seemed to be falling ever closer, threatening to wrap themselves around me, engulf me and drag me off to the black beyond.

  I say this to give you some idea of my thought processes in those early hours. I know I am speaking of things you have been taught, things you have seen on the holovids for most of your lives. But nothing has prepared you for what is out there, what must be faced if we are to survive the time that is left to us. It is vast, it is empty, and it does not care.

  It just does not care.

  I had music turned up loud for most of the next few hours. It seemed to help, to stop the oppressive sky from beating me down into the ice that lay everywhere below me. I almost didn’t hear the beep as the probe announced a finding.

  I checked the co-ordinates and my heart sank. It was a four-hour flight away. I wasn’t sure my mind could take so much open space, so much desolation. Then I remembered.

  Ten short years. And twelve points short of my breeding merit.

  I set my eyes on the brightest star, and told the probe to go.

  I tried to let my mind wander, to think of happier times in the warren, of solid walls and enough light to keep the dark at bay permanently. But my eye kept drawing me back to that star, a bright pinpoint. At first I thought it might be one of the planets, before I remembered that, without a star to light them, they too had gone mostly dark. I realised that I was looking at Sol itself… or what was left of her after the dimming.

  You’ve all seen the history vids, you all know of the great golden ball that some days seemed to fill the sky. And I know that some of you harbour thoughts that it’s still up there, hanging above, and that we will walk underneath its heat again.

  I wish I could show you that sad little point of light that is all that remains; I wish I could make you see just how far the dark has encroached since we went under. I flew over the desolation for hours. We know from our lessons that we went to ground where we hoped to be hottest. Iceland they used to call it, a place of hot springs and abundant thermal energy. Or so we thought. The dimming changed all of that; not quickly, but three hundred years without heat is a long time. And Iceland now lives up to its name.

  There is no sea.

  I’ll repeat that, for it is something we have forgotten. We see the pictures, of waves crashing on sandy shores, and smiling people walking hand in hand under open sky. Never again. There is ice, pack ice, and rock. Nothing else.

  I headed south and west. Again the history tells of cities, tall mighty monuments to our past. They are all gone. The ice has eaten everything. The history of mankind has gone cold. More than halfway into my journey I crossed what had been the Equator, what had been lush greenery. All gone. The whole planet has gone cold.

  That was my thought and I saw nothing to make me change my mind.

  Until I reached my destination.

  And here I must take more care over my words. There are no histories that mention what I must tell, no pictures I can show you. Only what I have seen with my own eyes, and if I am to impress you with urgency, I must be clear in my intent.

  The flyer told me I was somewhere in the South Pacific. It looked little different to the spot where I had come upside, but as we descended I saw that the ice here was less compacted. Several darker patches showed. As I got closer, I could see there were stretches of broken ice and slush. I started to think there might even be open water available. The probe beeped a proximity alert warning as the flyer hovered ten feet above an island of rock, black against the ice all around.

  There was ore here, and a lot of it. The scan showed a seam, some one hundred feet deep in the rock. I quickly spotted that I would have to land and drill to get proof, for if the deposit was as large as it seemed to be, then more flyers would be needed to carry it back below to where it was needed.

  I put the flyer down on the flattest spot I could find. I did not need to get out to supervise the drilling; the on-board bot handled that. But I could not come all this way to merely sit in a bubble. Even despite the glowering stars overhead, my curiosity won over my fear. I put on a helmet and ventured outside, aware even as I did so that I was probably the first human to walk above ground for three centuries.

  I had to turn up the suit heater after just two steps. The helmet told me I had two hours power left, but I wasn’t worried. I just wanted a short walk, just enough to be able to brag about it back in the warren.

  The only sound was the steady grinding of drill on rock. My heads-up told me that the strata being drilled was sedimentary on top of schist, the drill currently penetrating rock that was over two hundred million years old, and going through a million years of sediment a second.

  All of which was secondary to the fact that I had just found a cave.


  The heads up told me that drilling would take another thirty minutes. And with the heater turned up full, I was cosy enough, despite the outside temperature of minus 65, a figure which meant nothing to me. Besides, I could always rationalise my decision to enter the cave mouth by telling myself I needed some respite from the lowering stars in the sky above.

  I stepped into the darkness, and got a sudden fright when my helmet switched on a bright light to show me the way. I felt my heart pound in my ears and had to steady myself to quell the impulse to flee. But two more steps took me in to the cave proper, and I almost felt at home. The walls were smooth, some weathering process over the millennia was my assumption, and the light from the helmet was bright enough to light my way for twenty yards ahead. The cave floor sloped downwards, and as I proceeded the temperature rose. It was when it reached minus four that I was given pause for thought.

  I might have discovered much more than just a source of ore. There was obviously heat here. And plenty of it.

  I went in further.

  Fifty yards in I had to turn off the suit heater. I also got the first indication that this was more than a simple cave. I found a number imprinted on the wall. It read:

  SUB LEVEL 25.

  The passageway was man made.

  As you can imagine, my heart rate was elevated as I went in further. We know from our history that we were not the only ones to go under; indeed we were communicating with some of the others for the best part of a century. But there has been no contact for more than two hundred years. The thought I might be close to meeting another human being made me descend even faster.

  There was still no sound beyond the increasingly distant grind of the drill searching for ore. Neither was there any light beyond what my helmet provided. But it kept getting warmer. The heads-up told me there was only the thinnest of atmosphere beyond my visor, but it felt almost as if I walked a corridor in the warren.

  I came to a junction and chose the right hand fork, heading deeper into the system.